This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - Turkey
Pages: 1 ... 193194195 196197 ... 270
5821
« on: May 14, 2015, 08:58:32 PM »
So why do babies have cancer? Why did god create a world where babies die of cancer?
I've directed you to a lecture on the subject, as well as two books that directly address the concept of a loving god in a broken, sick world. I can't give you a one sentence answer to that, if I could even give one at all, and if I could, I doubt the answer would assuage your concerns in any way.
I want you to give me an answer. I want to see what you think.
I'm not actually looking for an answer about how god is somehow real and there's an excuse for his severe incompetence and cruelty. I just want to see what you think and why you believe it. I couldn't give less of a shit about religious books and long winded "answers".
Okay, my mistake. Why did god create a world where babies can die of cancer? Because he created a world driven by evolution, and evolution by definition requires the existence of pain and death, and by that logic we grow as a species through this suffering. I can go on and on about how faith is contingent on free will, but there's no answer that will take away the pain of experiencing evil or loss.
5822
« on: May 14, 2015, 08:34:44 PM »
Hypocrisy.  I won't say she was doing anything charitable, but I don't have a problem with someone getting a once in a lifetime opportunity while painlessly ending a dying animal's life and feeding a village for a few days. This was no different from putting down the family dog.
5823
« on: May 14, 2015, 06:53:37 PM »
Gonna be honest, this sounds like another mcguffin big bang solution where they're using preliminary, likely uncorrelated data to support a highly theoretical notion.
5824
« on: May 14, 2015, 06:42:18 PM »
So why do babies have cancer? Why did god create a world where babies die of cancer?
I've directed you to a lecture on the subject, as well as two books that directly address the concept of a loving god in a broken, sick world. I can't give you a one sentence answer to that, if I could even give one at all, and if I could, I doubt the answer would assuage your concerns in any way.
5825
« on: May 14, 2015, 04:49:28 PM »
which is to see David's lineage eventually culminating in Jesus. I'm sure you understand that it's incredibly difficult for an atheist like me to understand why an omnipotent deity would act in such a manner.
Not to mention, I feel the Humean criticisms apply here: why Yahweh? Why not Allah? What legitimacy do metaphysical conclusions about the nature of God have in light of the empirical considerations? How do you know it wasn't, as Hume put it, an "infant Deity", or a collection of Deities as a group of ship-builders would construct a carrack?
What empirical basis do you have?
As an empirical basis, I think Aquinas does a reasonable job with his five proofs, though Augustine laid a more theological foundation. There are many forms of these proofs expounded by various philosophers. From there, the next level is determining which hypotheses (religions) are correct. Do I think Christianity is 100% correct? Not at all. I think the Jews used a lot of Ancient Near Eastern culture and myths to establish a framework of the world and its history, in addition to legitimate divine revelation and historical narrative. Christianity, by far, has the preponderance of sources and literary integrity throughout history, surviving an unparalleled litany of scrutiny. Why not Allah? Because the Qur'an is an unreliable series of documents with demonstrably false origins, particularly the singular authorship by Mohammed. Why would a god act in the way described in the bible, working slowly over thousands of generations? The lazy answer is simply that he wanted to, and the less lazy answer is that it allowed humanity to forge a relationship with the divine over a long time, which lends itself to a believable, verifiable series of events (referring to the hundreds of completed prophecies). The infant deity proposition is interesting, and I don't think it necessarily disagrees with Christianity, as there is a long period of silence between Jesus' time and the proposed events in Revelation, but it's just as feasible as any number of similar propositions, and I think they miss the mark in trying to characterize how a deity would behave.
Could you give an example and the reasoning behind it?
My answer won't be very good, since I'm pretty rusty on the specifics, but we'll stick with the Noah example. There isn't evidence of a worldwide catastrophic flood occurring, and yet every Ancient Near East culture has a flood myth, and despite geographical separation, they frequently resemble each other in characters, motivations, and consequences. The Epic of Gilgamesh is very similar to Noah's story, for example. The actual text of the story could very well be translated to indicate a regional flood, and note that I'm not talking about a liberal interpretation, but a legitimate scholarly translation. A lot of the popular details about the duration and number of animals is probably a form of poetic or reverent exaggeration.
5826
« on: May 14, 2015, 01:36:43 PM »
Please explain why the sky wizard gives babies cancer.
Some would argue it's a result of a depravity introduced by mankind. I find that pretty wishy-washy. Suffering is a difficult topic because atheists are biased to reject the answers. That's not a bad thing, it's just hard to convey a response that you'll accept. C.S. Lewis covers it eloquently in his books "The Problem of Pain" and "A Grief Observed", with a short quote as an example: “The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".” , And my go-to source for apologetics, Ravi Zacharias, discusses it here. It's tough to convey the answer to someone with a humanistic viewpoint, because it's simply not conceivable to them that love might not actually mean just making everything happy and easy. 'Happy' and 'good' are not the same, and neither is 'suffering' the antithesis to 'goodness'. Saint John of the Cross wrote an incredible book on the purpose of suffering in personal growth in his book "The Dark Night of the Soul", though that's extremely advanced theology. There's no such example of wanton killing. It's all essentially cause and effect, with the difference being that the forces of nature don't have a capacity for grace.
What about Soddom and Gomorrah? I'm not asking facetiously, because I'm fairly sure you've accounted for that in the past and I'm interested in the answer.
But, then again, there is the example of God sending two bears to maul forty-two children for making fun of a bald prophet. . . And then God strengthening King Eglon of Moab to ally with the Ammonites and the Amalekites to annex Israel for 18 years until Ehud saved them. . .
Soddom and Gomorrah were claimed to have been entirely depraved and sinful, similar to the flood story. As for other examples of God keeping Israel down, there are many more examples and it's often a punishment for turning to false idols, or better put an attempt to realign them with his plan for them, which is to see David's lineage eventually culminating in Jesus. How do you distinguish truth from myth?
I've studied the OT academically and done a lot of exegesis (study) on various stories, and while I don't mean to assert my views as fact or representative of the bulk of Christians, there are quite a few examples where I think the writer was speaking poetically and reverently to express an opinion or feeling, rather than literally describing events.
5827
« on: May 14, 2015, 09:59:33 AM »
I have a lot of trouble seeing how Christianity can make people happier. The idea of an unending, infinitely powerful dictator is terrifying to me.
Because us Christians don't see God as a dictator.
I'd say claiming God is a dictator is as meaningless as saying the laws of physics are.
Yeah he's definitely not a dictator. That's why he didn't give you 10 rules you have to follow to the letter or he'd send you to evil sad time for eternity.
To Christians or really anyone that accepts objective morality, moral laws are analogous to other laws of nature. I don't shake my fist at the moon when a boat capsizes because of its tidal forces.
Except your so called god can decide to sink a boat for the fuck of it, and from reading the bible, Che has done those things. He's a murderer.
There's no such example of wanton killing. It's all essentially cause and effect, with the difference being that the forces of nature don't have a capacity for grace.
Explain how flooding the earth isn't wanton killing.
Or better yet, explain cancer in children.
Wanton means unjustified, and there's a clear justification in the text. I consider the bulk of Noah's story to be myth, though.
5828
« on: May 14, 2015, 09:54:50 AM »
I have a lot of trouble seeing how Christianity can make people happier. The idea of an unending, infinitely powerful dictator is terrifying to me.
Because us Christians don't see God as a dictator.
I'd say claiming God is a dictator is as meaningless as saying the laws of physics are.
Yeah he's definitely not a dictator. That's why he didn't give you 10 rules you have to follow to the letter or he'd send you to evil sad time for eternity.
To Christians or really anyone that accepts objective morality, moral laws are analogous to other laws of nature. I don't shake my fist at the moon when a boat capsizes because of its tidal forces.
Except your so called god can decide to sink a boat for the fuck of it, and from reading the bible, Che has done those things. He's a murderer.
There's no such example of wanton killing. It's all essentially cause and effect, with the difference being that the forces of nature don't have a capacity for grace.
5829
« on: May 14, 2015, 09:50:32 AM »
Some kids at my university signed a petition to change walkway signs from saying Walk Only Zones. Basically they implemented this policy in high traffic areas to prevent bikes, scooters, or golf carts from causing accidents with pedestrians. But now people are saying it's oppressive, and a form of microaggression, because some people are disabled and can't walk. 
5830
« on: May 14, 2015, 09:43:14 AM »
There are like four people on this site that know what you're talking about.
5831
« on: May 14, 2015, 09:41:49 AM »
I have a lot of trouble seeing how Christianity can make people happier. The idea of an unending, infinitely powerful dictator is terrifying to me.
Because us Christians don't see God as a dictator.
I'd say claiming God is a dictator is as meaningless as saying the laws of physics are.
Yeah he's definitely not a dictator. That's why he didn't give you 10 rules you have to follow to the letter or he'd send you to evil sad time for eternity.
To Christians or really anyone that accepts objective morality, moral laws are analogous to other laws of nature. I don't shake my fist at the moon when a boat capsizes because of its tidal forces.
5832
« on: May 14, 2015, 09:11:01 AM »
I have a lot of trouble seeing how Christianity can make people happier. The idea of an unending, infinitely powerful dictator is terrifying to me.
Because us Christians don't see God as a dictator.
I'd say claiming God is a dictator is as meaningless as saying the laws of physics are.
5833
« on: May 13, 2015, 09:44:33 PM »
Terrible haircut, braces, and a dick. Nope.
5834
« on: May 13, 2015, 05:38:48 PM »
Mere Christianity is a great book. Give it a read.
I was actually planning on it.
I think you'll like his work. Obviously you'll disagree with some of the premises to start, but he's got an interesting perspective and a compelling writing style. He was an avowed atheist, so he writes from that experience. It should be relatable.
5835
« on: May 13, 2015, 01:54:21 PM »
Mere Christianity is a great book. Give it a read.
5836
« on: May 12, 2015, 06:54:55 PM »
I'm not sure why you're complaining. BF never had squads, and pretty much nobody used anything but infantry, so loudouts should let us see a bit of diversity on the field without having to swap out at a CP.
The only things this really negates are classes like jet/dark troopers and the spies. I'll judge it once they release more info on weapons and builds.
BF never had squads
LOL, go back to Battlefront 2 and see if it doesn't have squads.
I still play BF2. It doesn't have squads. NPCs may run with you and you can do basic commands, but that's not what's being discussed.
5837
« on: May 12, 2015, 06:51:38 PM »
What job was she complaining about? Edit: nvm complaining about debt.
Wasn't this written by a man?
For some reason I thought the post mentioned the person he was responding to was a woman. It doesn't really matter.
5838
« on: May 12, 2015, 06:49:41 PM »
National parks would completely fail to succeed in this aspect if hunting were outlawed. Trophic cascades caused by unchecked prey-animal populations is devastating to the environment on a long-term timeline. Hunting is absolutely integral to environmentalism and preservation. I'd probably argue that the only reason the deer population, for example, is so high, is because we hunt them. So they breed faster as an evolutionary response. If we stopped hunting them, they wouldn't have any need to breed as fast as they do, would they?
No, it's not a result of evolution or even short-term adaptation. It's largely a result of urbanization and taking territory away from predators, allowing a huge rise in prey-animal population.
That is often not the case, especially with National Parks where the agencies explicitly state in their reports that keeping populations high for hunters is a priority.
They can artificially increase the numbers (largely because the licenses bring in income to sustain the parks I imagine), but it's still a conservation effort.
5839
« on: May 12, 2015, 06:14:36 PM »
What job was she complaining about? Edit: nvm complaining about debt.
5840
« on: May 12, 2015, 06:10:43 PM »
I absolutely did not bother reading your post because anyone that advocates a tyrannical state deserves to be shot.
Good thing that's not what I'm doing, then.
5841
« on: May 12, 2015, 04:53:52 PM »
I like to bring Sep7agon the latest and greatest trippy gifs.
5842
« on: May 12, 2015, 03:17:33 PM »
"These are our guidelines."
- Yeah, but they are very broad.
"Well, we will only interpret them very strictly, promise!
- Which we have absolutely no way of verifying.
"Looks like you're just going to have trust us to sit on all this sensitive and private information and barely ever use it!"
I really don't understand why this keeps being asserted. The guidelines aren't broad at all; it's not about how they interpret it. "Don't worry people, we only collect your data without doing anything with it. Before doing that, we need a warrant! Relax, your privacy is safe. Oh, but let's conveniently ignore the fact that this court is shrouded in secrecy, doesn't have to answer to anyone, doesn't have to reveal records and doesn't even have to prove anything, all while it can potentially routinely hand out dozens of warrants every single day." It does have a regulatory agency, though, as it's a federal court. Not being able to release records is a stipulation of being involved in intelligence gathering; having each case publicized would effectively nullify any advantage gained. Either way, like I said before, I am not opposed to certain intelligence gathering. I am just extremely surprised by how you are seemingly downplaying all of this. Not to sound like a tinfoil hatter, but "just trust us, we promise we will play by the rules and not go around some relatively flimsy safeguards" isn't good enough.
I'm not sure what you think I'm downplaying. The majority of your argument, and those from others in this thread, are that you just don't trust the government to not violate your rights. Well, we have seen no evidence of this, even in Snowden's massive leak. The data is anonymous until a warrant is obtained, and put simply there's no reason for the government to want to look into the everyday lives of American citizens. They have a massive amount of information to sort through every day, and even then that only led to 170 searches last year, meaning only 170 times did they request to see even basic cell data, which doesn't even include the content of calls or texts. There's quite a bit of the Patriotic Act I'm not comfortable with, and it's mostly because of the secrecy of the results, and I think that's a normal response. But with the rise of home-grown, grassroots Islamists in our country and in our allies', stuff like this is absolutely vital. We're not sending people to internment camps, we're not drafting college kids to fight someone else's war, and we're not shutting down mosques and falafel joints to catch terrorists, we're going through a regulated judicial process to find terrorist cell connections, and at times an innocent person's name may come up on the screen of an NSA agent who's cleared top secret. In an ideal world this would never exist, but the alternatives of the past are far less reasonable.
5843
« on: May 12, 2015, 02:23:48 PM »
There's two main issues I have with this. One is that because of how secretive it all is, there's a good chance that this will be abused. It's easy to say that the NSA will behave and follow the guidelines, but I sometimes strongly doubt that they will. Besides, the rules are easy enough to stretch, especially when there's no communication with the general public. You don't have to be a lawyer to see how "reasonable, articulable suspicion of a threat to national security" can be extended to cover measures way beyond the mere prevention of terrorism and the likes. Snowden's leak is the only example of leaks or abuses; what was actually leaked demonstrated no violation of oversight. As for secrecy being an excuse to bend the rules, well that's a product of a representative system and the need for their work to remain private to avoid compromising operations. A lot of what this really boils down to is that you just don't trust the government to carry this program out without abuse, despite a (frankly surprising) lack of violations on their part. For example, merely having a bad relationship with a certain country (Iraq, Iran, Syria...) or groups can be considered a reasonable suspicion of a terrorist attack, being sufficient grounds to analyse a ton of potentially sensitive information. After all, when a specific act has finally been predicted, it'll often be too late to still stop it, meaning that preventive checks "just in case" would be perfectly acceptable. Same goes for what constitutes a threat to national security. A bombing? A plane being hijacked? Sure. But what about riots in a certain area? Protests that could potentially get out of hand? Any situation involving a public official? These policy guidelines leave a significant grey area, and any actions that do end up being taken will likely never be known by the general public. Those gray areas really aren't there. It's pretty specific how they associate ties, and it starts with whether you have contacted flagged cell phone numbers associated with terrorists, or are within a few degrees of separation from one (I.E., you text your friend who is in contact with a terrorist cell number). They have to demonstrate a connection, and until then they can't even see the names/numbers of the callers or the time and date of the call. As for being too late to act, that's the whole point of a network of data. The recent court ruling pulls metadata databases back to the service providers, effectively nullifying the NSA's network of data. But with Snowden's leak, we have seen that this program has led directly to arrests of foreign terrorists and subsequently put a stop to enemy operations. A massive operation like 9/11 would not have been nearly as feasible today as it was pre-2001. Secondly, metadata is not as anonymous as you might think. Simply googling "metadata anonymous" will give you several studies by institutions like Stanford and MIT, showing how easy it is to identify a person and create personal data just by going off metadata. I'm not going to bother searching through my notes from last year, but my IT law and privacy classes came to pretty much the same conclusion. Like I said earlier, it's simply not possible to draw these conclusions based on what they have access to before getting a warrant from the court. They don't have access to name, numbers, dates, and times of calls until they get a warrant. And even if they did, then that's really an issue of the NSA employing individuals who are trustworthy and professional. Obviously, Snowden is the exception in this case.
5844
« on: May 12, 2015, 01:25:09 PM »
It is appaling that we, as a people, have allowed the state to amass as much power as it has today. Frankly, I think we deserve all of the damage that is done.
Gonna be honest, this makes me think you didn't really read my post, since it specifically discusses how it hasn't done damage, and is debilitated by regulation and stagnation.
5845
« on: May 12, 2015, 12:37:24 PM »
Nope. She doesn't get laid in the books, and only showed a bit of skin once in the show.
5846
« on: May 12, 2015, 12:35:36 PM »
The way you illustrate the effectiveness of the NSA makes them appear inefficacious. Am I correct in assuming so?
If that's the case, what's the point in having an NSA then? If they can't curtail terrorism by either constitutional or unconstitutional means, then I fail to see their relevance within intel operations.
I think they are effective, and necessary. The point is that their capabilities are far behind where they should be. Intelligence requires the connecting of data points, and without a sophisticated set of tools we are at risk.
5847
« on: May 12, 2015, 12:23:27 PM »
Your tile says Patriot Act and NSA. I said the Patriot Act oversteps the rights of citzens. You asked me to show a single example. I showed quite a few. Those links also reference data collection.
If its all easy to rebut then be my guest.
No, you actually said,"There are certainly areas where they over extend their purpose and intrude on the rights of citizens", which to me indicates you're referring to the NSA, since it doesn't make sense to refer to the Patriot Act by the pronoun 'they'. Since rebutting those lists leads the thread off topic, I'll only respond by targeting a few. Claims that it's unconstitutional because it allows searches without a warrant are not true, as demonstrated in the OP. The NSA must go through a court and demonstrate why it's necessary, just like a police wiretap. It does not violate the First Amendment by restricting disclosure of search orders by their recipients because it is very common in law enforcement and national security to require non-disclosure during investigation. It does not violate the First Amendment by allowing the FBI to launch investigations for expressing speech, because that is not a violation of their free speech; if I tell a cop I'm going to murder someone, he has every right (and responsibility) to act on that in some investigatory manner. The list goes on. I'd be happy to address specific aspects, but expecting me to address someone else's lists like this is not conducive to this discussion. What I asked for was a specific example where a citizen's rights were violated by the NSA's investigative process, not a hypothetical discussion about the Constitutional ramifications of the program.
5848
« on: May 12, 2015, 12:13:25 PM »
There are certainly areas where they over extend their purpose and intrude on the rights of citizens.
Can you provide a single example?
Really?
https://www.aclu.org/surveillance-under-usa-patriot-act
http://www.scn.org/ccapa/pa-vs-const.html
I mean take a read if you're not familiar I guess. I don't think you should be fine with any of that. It pretty blatantly violates the constitution. That much unchecked power will eventually be misused.
I'm specifically referring to abuses by the NSA in its metadata collection, though a lot of the listed "abuses" in those links are easy to rebut.
5849
« on: May 12, 2015, 12:08:20 PM »
No, it's not a result of evolution or even short-term adaptation. It's largely a result of urbanization and taking territory away from predators, allowing a huge rise in prey-animal population. Source?
I don't have any handy. It's information I learned in various biology courses in school. I had an entire semester dedicated to riparian habitats and studying trophic cascades. Here's a source that discusses the impact that artificial and natural population control has on the environment. http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/trophic-cascades-across-diverse-plant-ecosystems-80060347
5850
« on: May 12, 2015, 12:01:51 PM »
One of my conservative teachers actually surprised me (and the rest of the class) by supporting the NSA. His reasoning, which I actually agree with, was: "If you have nothing to hide, why are scared?"
I can definitely understand why people want their privacy 100% secure, but I suppose I'm just a tad apathetic to the whole thing.
I think that's a very poor argument. It implies the NSA has far more power than they actually do. In reality, we don't need a justification for wanting privacy, so we enact regulations to ensure that it's protected at all times unless its violation is necessary to prosecute a crime. There are certainly areas where they over extend their purpose and intrude on the rights of citizens.
Can you provide a single example?
Pages: 1 ... 193194195 196197 ... 270
|
Show Posts